The burst of public discussion last year about whether the border search exemption applies to laptops was the result of a bizarre and frankly nonsensical ruling by the ninth circuit that unheld suspicionless laptop searches by conflating them with searches of vehicles. It was my opinion that this ruling, being so obviously unsound, would be accepted for appeal regardless of the higher court's inclinations about the correctness of its conclusion, as even supporters of random, suspicionless searches should want their position to be staked out in a logical way.

Nope. The circuit refused to rehear the case enblanc and the Supreme Court denied the petition for certiorari. Two days later, Arnold was found dead. He committed suicide.

The Supreme Court doesn't say why they denied certiorari. The government argued that the issue was not ripe for review because no conviction had been handed down against Arnold, so perhaps thats the reason.

In any event, judicial review of these searches has stopped with a (tortured) conclusion that they are A-OK, the Obama administration is way past their self imposed deadline for taking a position on this, Feingold seems to have fallen silent on it, and AFAIK we have one bill from Loretta Sanchez winding its way through the system which will require the collection of more information and kick the debate out a few more years into the future.

Is there anyone reading this who has any genuine experience doing historical research? One of the conclusions uponwhich this whole search regime is based is the idea that the government has always searched the belongings of international travelers. In digging into this it appears that in fact the founders intended the 4th amendment to prohibit customs searches and that with one short exception, searches of travelers were not performed until after the Civil War. I'd like to dig up some more information about that, but I have no idea where to start.

Michael Arnold committed suicide